This is the flag of the Human Republicsignifying Unity over the Blue-Green Earth.

Okay. Some explination.

Several years ago I came up with an idea for a TV series. (Where is it written that all our dreams must be small ones?) The working title for it is Never Surrender. It is supposed to be a realistic, sci-fi, war drama following the crew of the Human Republic Heavy Cruiser, George S. Patton Jr. The extreme oversimplification is that it is WWII in the Pacific set amongst the stars against Space Nazis. (I do plan to make it better than that sounds.) Anyway, to help me flesh out this Human Republic Universe; the aliens, the technology, the planets, etc., I started writing short stories. The point of having the flag next to these stories on my Published Works page is so people can quickly tell which stories are connected in this universe.

This is a work in progress, but eventually I’ll get around to making up a list of planets, major “historical” figures and all kinds of stuff like that.

The Stories

This is a timeline listing all of the stories (and novel) I’m working on and their status. The “published” and “accepted” I feel are self-explanatory. “Finished” stories are ones that I am in the process of submitting to various magazines. Hopefully, they will soon be moved over to “accepted” and then “published.” Stories listed as “writing” are stories that could be half-finished or are just a title with a plot and maybe some scribbled notes in a notebook. Then there are ?? stories. These are the ones where I have an idea or a setting, but I don’t have a story, yet. Give me time.

The Aliens

This is a listing of (so far) all the aliens in my universe. Eventually, I’ll make separate pages for them, but for now I’ll just list the stories they are in and what role they play. I think the notes after the stories are rather self-explanatory, and tell whether the aliens “appear” in the story and have speaking roles, are only “mentioned,” or if we only know about them through their “artifacts.”

Whistlers

As Yet Unnamed Slave Race

“Standing Tall” (appear)

Three unnamed “Stone-age” species

“Tough Questions” (mentioned)

Four extinct civilizations

“Tough Questions” (mentioned)

Alien 101

One of the problems with writing a bunch of stand-alone short stories all set in the same universe is that you tend to repeat yourself. You can spend a great deal of time in one story explaining the history, culture, appearance of an alien species. That’s okay. But what about when those aliens show up again in another story? Do you repeat all of that or just hope that the readers have already read the first story, some of which haven’t been published yet? My solution – for now – is to put just enough information in the stories so they make sense, and put more detailed explanations here.